Tanya Chua

Tanya Chua (born 28 January 1975) is a 3-time Best Female Vocalist Golden Melody Award-winning Singaporean singer-songwriter. She released her debut album, Bored, in December 1997. Chua then moved to Taiwan in 2006 to focus on the Chinese music industry. She was a judge on Sing My Song for its first two seasons.

Early years

Chua was born in Singapore in a Chinese family as the younger of two daughters. She attended CHIJ Saint Nicholas Girls' School and graduated from Singapore Polytechnic with a Diploma in Business Administration in 1996. Chua started out singing in English, releasing her first English album, Bored, in 1997. She was also the first Singaporean to win a prize in the Asia Song Festival, coming in first in the "Unpublished" category in 1998 before she furthered her studies at the Musicians Institute in Hollywood, California.

Chua signed on to Universal Music Taiwan in 1998 and released her first Mandarin album, Breathe, in 1999. That album comprised compositions of her English songs matched to Chinese lyrics by Taiwanese lyricists. In 2001, Chua performed for her own country during the Singapore National Day Parade 2001 with the theme song titled "Where I Belong".

Rise to prominence

In 2003, Chua signed a new contract with Warner Music in Taiwan, releasing the album Stranger, which topped sales charts in Taiwan. Her second Warner album, Amphibian (2005), won her a Best Female Artist at Taiwan's Golden Melody Awards. The 2006 release of her compilation T-time marked an end to her album contract with Warner, and she is currently under record label Asia Muse. Her Goodbye and Hello (2007) album was nominated in 7 categories at the 19th Golden Melody Awards where she repeated her Best Mandarin Female Artist win and also garnered a Best Album Producer award. She followed up with three Singapore Hit Awards for Best Local Lyrics, Outstanding Local Music Achievement, and Asia Media (Female Artiste) in November 2009.

Tanya has written as well as produced a number of songs for other singers, like Gigi Leung, Fish Leong, Faye Wong, Stefanie Sun, Valen Hsu, Karen Mok, A-mei, Sammi Cheng, Sandy Lam, S.H.E, Rene Liu, Tiger Huang, Na Ying and Tarcy Su (all female singers). She was praised by Taiwanese producer and songwriter Jonathan Lee as being a "musician" and not just a mere "performer". In 2008 Lee gave her a handmade guitar in appreciation of her talents.

In 2009, Chua's seventh album If You See Him (若你碰到他) was awarded one of the Top 10 Selling Mandarin Albums of the Year at the 2009 IFPI Hong Kong Album Sales Awards, presented by the Hong Kong branch of IFPI. After 14 years, Chua returns to Singapore to perform for a leg of her "Tanya Chua and the Cities" world tour in 2011.

In 2011, Chua released her eighth Mandarin studio album entitled Sing It Out of Love (說到愛) and also released an English album entitled Just Say So, becoming the first artist to do so. In 2012, Chua won the Best Mandarin Female Artist in the Golden Melody Awards for the third time breaking the record as the first female artist to win 3 times in this category.

In 2013, her ninth Mandarin studio album entitled Angel & Devil (天使與魔鬼的對話) was released, and earned her a nomination for "Best Female Mandarin Singer" at the 25th Golden Melody Awards. One of the songs in this album “十万毫升泪水”was also used as sub theme song for the hit Singapore drama series “The Dream Makers”. The drama series led to the popularity of both "十万毫升泪" as well as the theme Song “幸福不难” written by Singaporean singer-songwriter Serene Koong, and resulted in Tanya winning “Best Local Music Composition” for this song at the 2013 Singapore Hit Awards.

Chua has been a judge on Sing My Song.

Chinese albums

English albums

Compilation albums

Other albums

Soundtracks

Singles and extended plays